Editing and navigation shortcut questions

[Ryan Betts]

I have been using netbeans for 4 months as a Java IDE.

I quickly gave up on the netbeans emacs key-bindings (using nb 6.5 on
OS X). Without my usual .emacs bindings, no marks, even simple
commands like yank missing, I decided learning the primary netbeans
keystrokes would be better.

I recently searched through some nbusers archives (searching for
emacs) but found few recent relevant posts. Likewise, google returned [http://editor.netbeans.org/faq.html
] (largely empty?) and [http://wiki.netbeans.org/
Java_EditorUsersGuide] (which was more helpful).

Perhaps someone here would be kind enough to lend a hand and point a
relatively new user to some helpful information? Here are several
tasks yearn to learn in netbeans.

* Edit a region or rectangle. I'd like to select several columns
across several rows of text and change those columns in some common
way (indent, delete, insert text, find/replace with regexp, etc.)

* Use regular expressions to find and replace *without* a pop-up
window that obscures the text I'm trying to search though. The find/
replace dialogue almost always covers the text in the file I'm trying
to edit.

* Make copy/paste keep a cut or copy stack? Emacs remembers previous
cuts/copies and allows them to be yanked multiple time, allowing the
user to cycle through the clipboard history.

* Perform an incremental forward or reverse search, moving the cursor
forward or backwards to the first instance of text matching the search
regexp as the regexp is typed. (The shortcut says this is FIND, Meta-
F. I think this requires typing meta-F repeatedly to advance the
cursor?)

* If I have lots of types with pre-ambles (like ProductClassNameOne
and ProductClassNameTwo), can I navigate to ProductClassNameTwo by
simply typing "Two"? (Make "navigate to type" not require the first
few letters of the type name.)

* Navigate to an open file by typing a few unique letters from its
file name. Switch to tab w/o a mouse?

* Join and jump between editing panes via the keyboard? I discovered
the "drag-the-tab-to-a-magic-corner" method of splitting the edit
pane... but the feature is very clumsy to use (at least I am clumsy
with it).

* Treat the open file list as a global list and not a per-editing pane
list of tabs specific to one pane. I think this is the underlying
reason the split window features seem clumsy to me.

* Make TAB indent per-formatting rules and not insert whitespace.

* Revert a file to the last saved file (throw away unsaved
modifications without closing the tab.) (Not revert to version
controlled copy).

* Reveal the current buffer in the project navigator hierarchy?


I do appreciate many, many of the netbeans features I've discovered. I
apologize if too many of these questions are obviously answered. A
netbeans learning mode in which keyboard shortcuts are flashed on the
screen when mouse actions are used (or perhaps for unbound shortcuts,
an indication of such so that this can be discovered) would be really
remarkable.

Thank you sincerely,
*--Ryan.